Flight management systems are used on aircraft to integrate information from data sources and to perform, or assist a pilot in performing, functions related to, for example, navigation, flight planning, guidance and navigation, and performance management. Many aircraft have a visual display system coupled to the flight management system that displays a number of different screen pages in which the user can obtain information or perform a function. For example, the flight management system can display a flight plan on the visual display system.
In addition, a printer may be coupled to the flight management system to print the flight plan. However, conventional flight management systems may present problems in that the flight plan cannot be viewed in the format and/or scale that the flight plan is to be printed. This may result in wasted time, and paper, printing undesired information and/or formats of the flight plan and reprinting the desired information and/or formats.
Conventional flight management systems are also problematic in that, generally, a user must scroll through a plurality of screen pages to obtain a flight plan or other types of desired information. This can be problematic due to the fact that certain pages are available only after viewing a hierarchy of other pages and/or the desired information may be on more than one page. This process of viewing desired information is time consuming and inefficient.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide aircraft systems with flight management systems that enable users to view desired information before printing. In addition, it is desirable to aircraft systems with flight management systems that enable a user to view desired information on one screen that would otherwise only be viewable on a plurality of screens. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.